Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Ben Gibbard & Jay Farrar

As we'd mentioned last week in one of our posts, Death Cab for Cutie & Postal Service's Ben Gibbard along with Son Volt's Jay Farrar, teamed up to write twelve original tracks based on Kerouac's words from his novel Big Sur, for the film One Fast Move or I'm Gone. If ya haven't got the cd yet, here are a few streams to break you in.

"Jack Kerouac was a literary rock star, lionized by his fans. He was called the avatar of the Beat Movement, a new voice of his generation. But along with sudden fame and media hype came his unraveling. The new film, One Fast Move or I'm Gone- Kerouac's Big Sur, takes us back to the cabin he retreated to in the Big Sur woods. The story unfolds through Kerouac's prose, first-hand recollections from Kerouac's contemporaries, as well as writers, poets, actors and musicians who have been deeply influenced by Kerouac's unique gifts.Appearing in the film are Sam Shepard, Patti Smith, Tom Waits, S.E. Hinton, Donal Logue, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Hunter and many more. The stunning, High Definition visual imagery is set to original music composed and performed by recording artists Jay Farrar of Son Volt and Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie.

Gibbard stayed in Big Sur to compose songs for his band's 2008 Grammy-nominated, #1 selling, album, Narrow Stairs. For many years, Jay Farrar's songwriting has been inspired and influenced by Kerouac's compositional style. Gibbard and Farrar, having never previously met, discovered a mutual kinship in their passion for Kerouac's work while recording several songs for the documentary, produced by Kerouac Films. After the initial San Francisco recording session in July 2007, they decided to develop the project further to create an album using Kerouac's own words from the book as the lyrics."